Unit 2 Working the land

高一必修 4

Listening and writing

Listening on page 48

Can we see this beautiful scene again?

What makes the world’s desert grow?First tick the causes you think are true. Then listen to the tape and tick what you hear.

1 Heat and little rain.

2 Turing forests into farmland.3 Overusing fields to feed farm animals.

You think You hear

4 Using new scientific

farming methods.

5 Wasting water in farms

and at home.

6 Farming too much on

poor land.

You think You hear

Listen to the tape again and choose the best answer to each question on page 48.

Answer: B A B

Listening text

Why do we have deserts today? Deserts have not always been here. Most deserts that we have today were once green lands full of the plant life. One of today’s biggest deserts is in North Africa. However, in the 1st century BC farms in the North Africa grew corn and wheat to make bread for the whole city of Rome. How did this area become desert?

FIGHTING GROWING DESERTS

Both weather and people can help from a desert. Hot weather

or very little rain makes the land so dry that nothing can grow. If

people cut down or burn trees and plants to make land clear for

farming, the wind can blow the soil away and turn the dry land

into sand. Another big problem is farming on

land that is not very good.

This poor land can very quickly turn into desert, if it is farmed too much. One of the biggest causes, however, is when people take their animals to the same fields to feed over and over, and the fields finally lose all their nutrition. Because of these problems, deserts are slowly taking over green land in many parts of the world, including China.

However, we can fight the growing deserts! In some parts

of China people are working to prevent desert from expanding.

In Xinjiang , for example, some farmers are trying new scientifi

c farming methods. These methods make it possible to use less l

and for crops, so farmers then can plant trees on the rest of thei

r land!

On Xinjiang farmer, used only half of his fields to grow the sa

me amount of crops as last year. On the other half of his lan

d, he planted fruit trees. The work of people like this is helpi

ng to fight the world’s growing deserts.

Speaking

Jia Sixie’s work was written 1,600 years ago. Is it still at all useful today? In pairs, discuss the following questions and take notes on your conclusions.1 What ideas in Qi Min Yao Shu are still in farming today?2 What problems do we have today in modern farming that Jia Sixie did not have in his time?

Writing

Use the ideas you discussed above to write a report about h

ow useful Jia Sixie’s ideas are for modern times. Use the ste

ps on page 53 to help you.

1,600 years ago the Chinese writer Jia Sixie wrote a book Qi Mi

n Yao Shu about good agricultural practices. Today some of Jia

Sixie’s ideas are still very useful to our modern times, but we ha

ve some problems today that he never had in his time.

Sample writing

Some of Jia Sixie’s ideas are still very useful to our modern ti

mes. Farmers still clear their fields of weeds. They still plough d

eeply the first time and less deeply the second time. In addition,

farmers everywhere still understand that changing crops in the

fields is still important.

However, we have some problems today that Jia Sixie never

faced in his time. We have environmental pollution that harms

fields and crops. We have great competition in the marketplace.

We have new, dangerous and powerful crop diseases.

Although our modern farmers still use some of Jia Sixie’s i

deas today, they face problems that were never heard of in Ji

a Sixie’ day.

祝同学们学习进步！